Ray Parlour has revealed to talkSPORT how fellow Arsenal legend Tony Adams got him in trouble after a night out on the town in Amsterdam.
It seems the ‘Romford Pele’ never had the best of luck with pre-season tours during his famous Gunners career.
There was that time he got arrested and faced six months in a Hong Kong jail after decking a machete-wielding 65-year-old taxi driver after an all-night bender.
Yep, you read that right. Here’s the full story of that particular caper.
And now he has told talkSPORT he was almost stranded in the Netherlands after being left behind by the rest of the Gunners team on their way to the airport for their flight home.
Both of these stories share the same troublemaker, but it wasn’t Ray.
Nope, it was his former roommate and club captain Adams, who just loved getting his pal in trouble.
And while this tale isn’t quite as good as hopping on a bus and leaving Ray to take on a crowd of Triads and Hong Kong police – again, this actually happened, full story here – it’s still pretty funny.
A model professional as always, Raymondo…
He said on the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast: “We’d all been on pre-season tour in Amsterdam and Arsene Wenger said to all the lads: ‘You can have a drink tonight, you can have a bit of fun’.
“So me, Dave Seaman and all the British guys were having a few drinks.
“I remember coming back to the room about 6:30 in the morning and we had to be on our coach at about 8am.
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“So I thought, I’ve got my bag packed, I’ve had a shower, I’m going to have a little lie down on the bed for an hour and a half, have a little nap, before we leave.
“So I said to [his captain and roommate] Tony Adams, who wasn’t drinking: ‘Tone, make sure you wake me up for the coach’.
“‘Oh yeah no problem’, he said.
“But he didn’t! He’s gone out the room and forgot to come back.
“So I’m in bed still asleep and everyone on the coach was saying, ‘Where’s Ray? Where’s Ray?’
“Wenger just said: ‘Leave him!’ So he left me in the hotel, and it was about a 40 minute journey to the airport!
“I was lucky because one of the receptionists noticed that I hadn’t come down and they’ve phoned my room and said: ‘Look, the coach is going’. What?!
“I ran downstairs but I missed it, so I had to get a taxi. I was thinking it was going to be a two week’s wages fine, at least, it’s got to be.
“As I walked through the airport I saw Wenger and was giving me a bit of a stare, but he left me get away with it because it was the last night.
“And so Tony nearly got me in trouble again, as usual!”
